Category Archives: Social Science

The Point of Origin Does Matter

Being against violence doesn’t engage me in the same way as being for peace. Being for peace calls for a different part of my brain and heart and eyes. In the tradition of my dominant learning, Buddhism, peace is about caring and caring follows knowing. How we get to know each other is an essential ingredient in the bread we call peace.

–Jack Ricchiuto, Jack/Zen

A Close Encounter of the Sociable Kind

Last week was a struggle for me. By Friday I had gradually contracted into myself as tightly as any turtle, but it wasn’t a comfort. I felt caged. I felt restless. I felt lonely. I’d been home all week, giving the house a power clean and tending the gardens. Other than chatting with my husband and on a couple of phone calls, I’d had little people contact. I had avoided working out for several days as well.

To coax myself into a better state, I arranged coffee with a colleague. We caught up on how her job was proceeding and what my Austin venture had been like. She left, and I hied myself to Curves and put myself through a vigorous workout. Then I decided to drive to Los Gatos in the afternoon to scope out the Unitarian Universalist church there (it was tiny!) and then to treat myself to a pot of tea at Peet’s. The barrista, cheerful and attentive despite the busy pace in the shop, carried the pot and cup while I toted a maple walnut scone and my books to an outdoor table. I sat warming in the sun, sipping tea, and listened to the numerous conversations occuring around me. Sparrows hopped nearby, scrounging for crumbs. I brushed my plate clean and observed as they bravely bounded under my table and between my feet to retrieve them. Such small creatures they are, all bones and feathers; one wonders how they survive.

At some point I decided to open my journal and create a list of 100 things that make me happy. Now, I was seated outside next to a plate glass window, the other side of which was the inside of Peet’s; there was a tall counter with bar stools next to the window. As I pondered my list I happened to look up and glance at the window. A woman of about 50, elegantly dressed, smiled at me and motioned toward my notebook. I smiled in response and returned to my task.

Several minutes later a friend called, and we began chatting. Half an hour later, while we were still talking, the woman left the café, smiled at me, and asked, “What number?” I excused myself from my friend and said, “Pardon?” She said, “What number are you on?” “Oh!” I replied, “I reached number 48. Then my friend called. It’s a list of 100 things that make me happy.” She followed with, “That’s a wonderful idea! How creative! Number 49 should be ‘talking on the phone with a friend.’ Have a good day!” She smiled and walked away.

I told my friend what had occurred, and we reminisced. It was such a friendly moment of connection! When I lived in Austin, this same friend and I would get together at cafés to talk and color in coloring books or draw. People would pop over to our table and comment on how much fun it looked. Rather than generate a pang of homesickness, this cheery encounter made me feel a little more at home, here, in Silicon Valley.

Masculinity Defined?

My friend Steve sent this article. What a hoot, and so true. I clipped a couple of bits that made me chuckle most, but the whole column is a fun read.

When you walk into Costco you immediately wish you had a family with eight or nine kids. I see all the bargains and, even though I’m a guy, start ovulating. I want more people at home to justify the purchase of all these enormous, cheap, bulk products.

…Unfortunately, I don’t know much about home improvement, and whenever I go to Home Depot I end up buying something small and pathetic, like a half-inch rubber washer. Walking out of that place with my little paper sack, I feel like I’m a quart low on testosterone. But let me loose at Costco, and it’s a different story. I love the moment in the parking lot when some Hot Mama sees my cart and says, “Wow, that’s a really big pork loin,” and I cock my head and look to the horizon and say, “Yeah, it’s huge.”

–Joel Achenbach, Adventures at Chez Costco

An Addition

Recently I alluded to the fact that my blog (a particular post) had been used as a negative example in someone’s essay on mindfulness and Buddhism. This disturbed me. I decided not to engage, and I remain committed to this. However, I thought that it might be helpful for readers to have access to an explanation of what I mean by “a mindful life.” I simply need to insert the link in an obvious place so it will catch readers’ attention. Here it is.

Spiritual Isolation

It is not physical solitude that actually separates one from others; not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. How often in a large city, shaking hands with my friends, I have felt the wilderness stretching between us. Both of us were wandering in arid wastes, having lost the springs that nourished us – or having found them dry. Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.

–Anne Morrow Lindbergh

London Falling Down

If IÂ’d gone in to work at the normal time, IÂ’d have been passing through KingÂ’s Cross station at about the time the bomb went off. But I felt no inclination to rush into work, following announcements on Tuesday about total restructuring of our division, and was being lazy, traveling an hour or so later than usual. Turned round at the station and came straight home. I escaped; many didnÂ’t.

–Andy Borrows, Older, But No Wiser

I am probably the least jingoistic person on the planet but I do feel it is worth commenting here on the amazing apirit of Londoners.

Maybe is is because we have had years of being bombed by the IRA and who knows, maybe it goes all the way back to the blitz, but the prevailing response to the awful events in London today is one of calm interest and concern for those poor souls involved but not once anything resembling panic.

All of my friends have said they will be back on public transport tomorrow and all have expressed the view that becoming fearful and curtailing our lives is just the response terrorists want.

–Euan Semple, The Obvious?

I have a special fondness for London (for Great Britain in general, actually). I spent a too short few days there in 1999 when I toured Europe for two weeks. I stayed near King’s Cross station; though I didn’t feel confident enough to use the Underground, I took buses everywhere. Being there, however briefly, created a connection. It hurts to see that the city has been attacked. I’m sad for those killed and injured. And also relieved that Andy and Euan are still around. You are all in my meditations.

In the Name of Love

Love is never the poorer for being accompanied by wisdom. It is not harmed by being denied a crown. The agonies we endure and inflict in the name of love come from making love bear too heavy a weight, from recklessly heaping our ambitions, fears, desires, and loneliness on top of another person — another who is as changeable as we. It is natural to form attachments to other people, but the pain produced from these attachments will vary according to our wisdom and maturity. If we see nothing higher at all and plunge thoughtlessly into the conflict of gaining and losing, we will surely suffer, but if we keep the ideals of the Dhamma before us, peacefully contemplating the transcience of things, we will ride more securely over the waves of fortune.

–Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano, Landscapes of Wonder

Decide to Network

Decide to Network
Use every letter you write
Every conversation you have
Every meeting you attend
To express your fundamental beliefs and dreams
Affirm to others the vision of the world you want
Network through thought
Network through action
Network through love
Network through the spirit
You are the center of a network
You are the center of the world
You are a free, immensely powerful source
Of life and goodness
Affirm it
Spread it
Radiate it
Think day and night about it
And you will see a miracle happen:
The greatness of your own life.
In a world of big powers, media, and monopolies
But of six billion individuals
Network is the new freedom
The new democracy
A new form of happiness.

—Robert Muller

Acceptance

According to recent research, older people do not tend toward increased crabbiness with age. If anything, their relationships tend to be more peaceful. The suggestion is that as we get wiser with experience, we spend less time trying to change people into our image and likeness. We spend more time taking people as they are and enjoying them in any way we can.

I think it’s a trend that could work at any age, and if anything, postponing this sage insight simply lacks merit. In part, it’s an expectation that no one person – even we! – cannot be all things to all people. It’s a good day when we can be one good thing to each person. In the world of culinary metaphors, why would we depend on any ingredient to offer all of the value of the others? Why wouldn’t we enjoy the simplicity of value scope offered by each ingredient?

There is a unique peace when we receive just what people have to offer, and nothing more, and nothing less.

–Jack Ricciuto, Jack/Zen

Love & Freedom

About love, divine love, whole love: Freedom, in a way, is higher than love. Love gives way to freedom. Love realizes the ascendancy of freedom. Love realizes the peak that freedom is. When you realize your original face, that authentic presence that flows from the vastness of your inner space in one continuous stream to the vastness of your outer space; when you realize the wholeness and aloneness of this space; when you realize the sheer bliss of this undivided consciousness — you realize freedom. You realize you are already free. You realize that freedom is inherent in your very being. Without fixation on ego, without identification with a separate self, without the projection of time, without past or future, what are you? Realizing this luminous emptiness of your original face, you realize you are free; you realize you cannot be confined by anything. You are freedom itself, your consciousness is inherently free and unbounded.

Or we can look at it from the other direction. What is it that binds you, imprisons you, restricts, restrains, limits, confines and defines? You are gradually becoming very, very clear about what imprisons you; that which creates your prison walls; that which keeps you from your treasure house within, keeps you from your heart’s deepest desire, keeps you separate, alienated, suffering. Ego fixation, with its want and fear, its preoccupation with thinking, the mind identified self with its allegiance to time, takes you out of the now, has you live an inauthentic, neurotic, stale life of suffering. Our deep allegiance to this ego structure keeps us from the freedom of our original nature. We know it is possible to return to the freshness and freedom of our true nature. Slowly, slowly we draw distinctions which help us differentiate the real from the unreal.

–Akilesh, Graceful Presence